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Friday, March 18, 2016

DIY Dress Up Station

Yay for nice enough weather to start furniture redos again!

This little dresser conversion project has been a long time coming.

A good friend of mine has a very different life than mine. She has four girls vs my four boys. Back last Fall she asked if I would be up for finding something to convert into a dress up station. With the weather being too cold to paint, and the holidays coming up, the project had to wait. Then the weather turned into the 60's and the perfect dresser was up for sale on VarageSale (an awesome app you should get). I only had to drive 3 minutes and spend $25 for this cute, little, four drawer dresser. Missing a knob? No problem! Seen better days? (Totally dirty underneath and inside the drawers) No problem!

First things first, remove the drawers and their supports

(except for the support right above the bottom drawer)...

Next, get a piece of wood (or crib support I had in my scrap pile,) and cut it to size to place on top of the supports that are above the bottom drawer. Once it is in, nail or screw it down.

Next, let your kids try out the new support. Good, it is kid tested and approved.

(sorry no pictures for next few steps...my bad)

Then you will need to lightly sand it down (I used 220 grit sandpaper) just

enough to allow paint to adhere. And then wipe it down and clean off all dust and dirt.

(Don't forget to also do this to the one drawer you will be keeping).

I used my Wagner paint sprayer and sprayed primer first. If you have paint+primer you are probably fine skipping this step. I chose to spray primer first so I could get away with using less paint :).

Then paint. Once again I used my sprayer and was done in less than an hour with all coats. I chose to spray inside the drawer to give it a nice clean look, since it had seen much better days.

Once paint is dry, put up patterned Contact paper like I did (lots of options available on Amazon), or you could use wrapping paper, wallpaper, or even fabric. Although Contact paper is adhesive, I still opted to use glue, especially around edges and corners. I had to cut each piece to size for each section. I first used Gorilla Glue, but that stuff really does expand and made bumps under the surface. I then used Liquid Nails and it worked great. I also used Liquid Nails for the circular mirror I got at Hobby Lobby for a couple dollars with my 40% off coupon.

Lastly put up an adjustable closet rod (around $6 at Lowe's) and new knobs...

I put Contact paper inside the bottom of the drawer as well.

Can you believe how PERFECT these knobs match the Contact paper?!

I saw them within 5 seconds of walking into the knobs and pulls section at Hobby Lobby

and had to make sure the heavens weren't open above me and shining down!

Make sure you hit the week that these babies are 50% off (about every 3 weeks).

And that is it! Dressers with faulty drawers, missing drawers, you name it, less than perfect dressers are all over and you can give one of them a second lease on life, and make a bunch of little kiddos super happy.

Now to figure out what to do with the other three drawers. I can't bear to throw them away, but all of the other Pinterest ideas are not totally seeming right for them. I am thinking of making a bookshelf...do you have any other suggestions???

Hi Haili, thank you for your question. The support was the wood piece I laid directly on top of the dresser's frame...the part right above where the bottom drawer slides in. Since the support was on top, it didn't affect how the bottom drawer slides in. I hope that answers your question?

About Mimiberry

I'm mimiberry, well Mimi Crisenberry, but you catch the drift. I'm the lucky mom of 4 awesome little boys. I choose to create (on a budget) because it brings me peace amidst the wildness and chaos. Drawing, painting, sawing, building, photoshopping, scoring deals, and giving life to old things makes me happy, so this is pretty much a blog of happiness.

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